Summary: If you’re like me, sometimes I can almost seem to lose track of just what guitars I have and where. Granted, I have a pretty big collection, and have been collecting instruments now basically since the year of 1967, when I got my first truly great guitar, my 1952 gold-top Les Paul! I have to say that since that initiation into great guitars I was really hooked, and I have been seeking out and finding many terrific instruments ever since!

The problem is that half the time, as I’m sure most people do, I find the main 4 or 5 guitars that really become my “go to” players, and the others just get visited on occasion…sometimes on very rare occasions, at that! Of course, we all know that each and every guitar is unique, and that they need to be played to literally be kept alive! An instrument that becomes neglected actually seems neglected, and there’s no question that a guitar that’s played often, actually sounds better too!

So this week I have taken to start digging into the old collection and seeing just what I might come up with. It amazes me how long I have let some guitars go without being played. Some seem to come to life almost immediately as I start to tune them up and play them again, and some seem to really be sad and tired, and almost “cry out” for some extra TLC!

If you have a situation such as this I’m sure that you’d find it very therapeutic to “break out” the old guitars and see just what you’ve been missing. The truth is that some of them will probably give you more than you ever thought right back to you, and you’ll probably make back some “old friends” that were tucked away so long that not only did you forget them, but you may’ve already been looking for something to fill the void that you unknowingly created by stashing them away.

All my guitars make me play differently, and each one is definitely there in my collection for a reason. The great joy now is re-discovering those old buddies of mine, while at the same time, rekindling those old and wonderful “reasons” I have them in the first place. Hope you can make back some of your “old friends” too, and rediscover the wonders of why you were fond of these guitars in the first place! And let’s face it you can never have enough guitars!

Gibson.com’sArlen Roth, affectionately known The King of All Guitar Teachers, is music lesson pioneer and the quintessential guitarist. An accomplished and brilliant musician — and one of the very few who can honestly say he’s done it all — Roth has, over the course of his celebrated 35-year career, played on the world’s grandest stages, accompanied many of the greatest figures in modern music and revolutionized the concept of teaching guitar.